These images are from a commission from the first issue of a beauuuutiful new European magazine called Spaces In-Between. I was hired to create an essay on LA Women at night with a bit of a noir feel and, honestly, I wish I had another week or two to work on it (I only had a couple nights as it was and a lot of my contacts fell through). I personally am not a big night owl and I actually enjoyed getting to tag along with a group of girlfriends one night as they wandered popular LA bars and then with a bartender another night and getting to peer into a scene I’m not a part of here. I also did some solo wandering along the beach at night and on the pier just willing with my mind for women to step into the ambient light lining the streets of the night.

Hey friends! The reason I’ve been so quiet over here is because I joined created forces with David Walter Banks to form Brinson+Banks a few years back and so much of my energy goes there. I still do work solo occasionally and create personal work solo, too, but the bulk of my work is there. I’d love for you to check out our creative collaborations in portraiture, lifestyle advertising work, and a big personal project called LA Woman on www.brinsonbanks.com! Read More

David and I went to Cuba to celebrate our 11th anniversary. It’d been far too long since we’d traveled on a non-work and non-family trip. These are just my personal photos from our wanderings in Havana, Trinidad and Cienfuegos. Read More

(First off: I haven’t blogged here in 6 months. There are a couple of good reasons (excuses) for that and they are: First, I post a lot on Instagram in realtime, follow me there, second off I have been very busy shooting for and running my other photography business with my husband David Walter Banks — we work as a team and photograph celebrities and do commercial lifestyle work, which you can see here at BrinsonBanks.com. However, that doesn’t mean I’m not shooting anymore, I’m still doing personal work. This is a first attempt at catching up.)

So I’m out of the closet on that topic now: yes, I like retirees. Yes, I like taking photos in the desert (bright! harsh! light!) and I really like parades (hey, my second internship was at a series of community weekly newspapers and I adored the kids and dogs and parades beat). So it should come as no shock that I headed back to The Fountain of Youth with two film cameras for another round. Read More

I photographed TOMS creator Blake Mycoskie in his office at the TOMS headquarters in Los Angeles for the Harvard Business Review. It was for a really interesting story about how Blake became disillusioned about his super successful business with a generous business model. Read it in Blake’s own words HERE

I photographed surfer John John Florence for The Wall Street Journal on the beach in Santa Monica. It was the same day I photographed actress Rebel Wilson so I went straight from this shoot to the studio to photograph Rebel. The story was about John John’s work-outs after an injury, and also to promote his upcoming film View From a Blue Moon (watch the trailer — I got chills it is so beautiful and believe me that I have never in my life cared to watch a surf movie… until now). Read More

I photographed Nguyen Tu A (a former Vietnamese American newspaper publisher who had to close after harassment and advertisers pulled out) and writer/activist Doan Van Toai for a story and an investigation by Frontline and ProPublica into the five unsolved murders of Vietnamese-American journalists from 1981 to 1990. Doan Van Toai was shot, even in his face, and survived the attack in 1989.

I had the great pleasure to get a sneak peek of the beautiful brand new Broad Museum in Downtown Los Angeles back in August before it opened. I photographed the collector himself, Mr. Eli Broad for The New York Times. Read More

I photographed Eva Chow in her insanely stunning and enormous art-filled house. My first encounter with her was when I photographed Art+Film at LACMA, which is her grand doing. Don’t know who Eva Chow is? Read thisRead More